Project Milestones Chart

This template identifies and tracks the major milestones associated with a project. It can be used to provide stakeholders with a quick snapshot of what is happening on a project from a feature focused standpoint.
Project Name
ID
Milestone

Description

Project Manager
Planned
Finish

Actual Finish

Issues

Date Updated
Risks

Action Log

Guidelines

Project Name The name assigned to the project.

Project Manager The name of the project manager.
Date Updated The date that the chart was last updated. If you have a complex chart with many milestones, or if the milestones are not all consistently updated, you may wish to move this field to the
individual milestone level.
ID A numeric identifier for the milestone. Ideally, this should coincide with the work breakdown structure (WBS) numbering system that will be used in project schedules and similar documents.
Milestone The name of the milestone that is being tracked. This should be informative enough to allow people to understand the milestone, and care should be taken to ensure that this truly is a
significant project milestone.
Description A more detailed explanation of the milestone, including (if necessary) why it is important to the project.
Planned Finish The date that the milestone is (was) scheduled to finish based on the project schedule. This should only be changed if the baseline is updated to reflect an approved change; it should
not be modified simply because the project is behind schedule.
Actual Finish The date that the milestone was actually achieved. This should only be completed when all of the conditions have been met e.g. signoffs have been provided, the customer has
accepted the deliverable, etc. Until that point, this field should be left blank. A date in this field indicates that this milestone does not require any further updating.
Issues This field should record details of any issues that are specifically associated with this milestone. The project manager should have some flexibility as to what should be included here, and it is not
intended to replace the status reportbut there should be sufficient information for a reader with some familiarity with the project to understand the problem.
Risks This field is similar to the Issues field above. It captures relevant risks that are specifically associated with the milestone and the projects ability to achieve that milestone.
Action Log This field should be a running log of any actions that are taken to ensure that the milestone is achieved over and above the regular tasks in the project schedule/work breakdown structure.
Unless the Issues and Risks fields are both blank, this field should always contain some content; and even if there are no known issues, any proactive steps taken to prevent issues/delays should still be
captured. This will help to demonstrate to stakeholders that the project team understands the importance of the milestone and is proactively managing for it.